Winter 2006

In her new book, Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead, Tamara Draut crunches numbers and interviews young adults across the country to show how, for the generations following the Baby Boomers, the transition to full-fledged adulthood—living on your own, launching a career, starting a family—has become difficult to accomplish without going broke.(...)

In 1996, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at about 4,000 and just beginning its dizzying five-year runup to more than 11,000. The United States was in the midst of the longest period of sustained economic growth on record. Wealth was being created on a scale not seen in our history. In politics, Bill Weld(...)

The economic recovery from the recession of 2001, both nationally and in Massachusetts, has been not only mixed, but also puzzling in a number of key respects. Nationally, growth has been fairly robust in Gross Domestic Product and corporate profits, and housing prices have risen rapidly in both the state and the nation through the(...)

Winter 2006 When President Bush’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform issued its report in November after 10 months of study and debate, US Sen. John Kerry wasn’t impressed. A fairer, simpler tax code will never come about, Kerry said, “so long as this process is driven by politics and special interests.” That’s hard to(...)

Michael Widmer and Cameron Huff accurately document the damaging cuts that have been inflicted on cities and towns over the past five years. When we reduce spending on education, public safety, and other basic government services, we not only reduce the quality of life in our communities today, we also threaten the economic future of(...)

Winter 2006 ROWLEY—The Internet has made shopping, paying bills, reading the newspaper, and, it turns out, breaking the state’s Open Meeting Law more convenient than ever. Fifteen years ago, if town officials wanted to circumvent the law, which prohibits a majority of a municipal governing body from discussing public business in private, they would have(...)

For the vast majority of citizens, municipal government is the most visible, and arguably most important, level of government, the one closest to home and the primary provider of the basic services on which our quality of life depends. However, the state fiscal crisis in 2002 painfully revealed the vulnerability of local services to the(...)

INTRO TEXT After many years and many miles of steady service, the trusty old station wagon still starts up every morning, but the body is dinged up, repair bills loom and, worst of all, the cup holder is broken. Time for a new car—but what to do with the old one? It’s worth little if(...)

INTRO TEXT The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority calls its Blue Hills storage tank project crucial to protecting the water supply of thousands of residents in Quincy, Milton, and Brookline, as well as Boston neighborhoods along the city’s southern tier. But environmental advocates say it is anything but a water protection project, charging that the plans(...)

INTRO TEXT ‘F’ is for failing, and some Massachusetts public schools have the dubious distinction of doing just that. But school turnarounds have not taken place as fast as education officials had hoped. A sizable cohort of students, especially in city schools, continues to be held back by poor academic performance, posting dismal MCAS results.(...)